


bat out of hell

by mysticaltorque



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: DoS: The Many Gardens of Shikabane-hime AU, Fairy Tale Elements, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hokage Shimura Danzou, Purple Prose, how baby kakashi got his groove back, the hyuuga can sometimes see gods and they Don't Like It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23723290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticaltorque/pseuds/mysticaltorque
Summary: or, baby anbu wolf gets swept off his feet by his dashing rescuer 'call me shikabane-sempai' who is possibly cooler than minato-sensei. and may also be a god, but that's secondary to everyone except crow, who may be having a religious crisis.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Nara Shikako
Comments: 18
Kudos: 506
Collections: Gen Freeform Exchange2020, Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	bat out of hell

**Author's Note:**

> this is a mess. it was written within twenty-three repeats of 'bat out of hell' by meat loaf. im so sorry but also not. you likely need to be blasting either metal or opera to not read this fic like a fever dream. at some point i will release the original time loop fic but it went multichapter so you get this now, i'm afraid.

Crow is half a chakra pill away from comatose and the rookie is bleeding from a chest wound making him a second too slow when the god appears as they cross into the Dead Wastes. Root has been dogging his team for days, with one Root implant and another too trusting team member leaving Crow dragging the rookie over the border with Sand and towards the Dead Wastes, hoping against hope they’ll be taken for dead if they skim close enough that Suna Black Ops will claim the Dead Wastes did them in- travelling in unfamiliar territory and being unfamiliar with strange desert quirks, of course these things happen, Hokage-dono- and turn a blind eye to a couple more missing-nin slinking around borders and taking escort work. He’s dragging a rookie along- fresh in every sense of the word, from the slight oversizing of his armour to the overagression of his mask- _Wolf_ , really? There’s subtle callbacks and then there’s utter ridiculousness!

But, of course, the god. While the Uchiha clan named their lineages after kami and such, the Hyuuga had never been so pretentious. That did not mean they did not believe, of course. Those whose Byakugan seemed small and dulled saw more than those with the sharpest. Most Branch House members prayed their children might see Beyond when their Byakugan, as it was a way to become a Main House member or at least never suffer the discipline of the Caged Bird Seal for fear of disrupting the connection- the gods may retreat but they were there, waiting for worshippers and succulence. All Hyugas were god-fearing, and for good reason. It had only been a decade since Hyuga Himawari’s tenketsu were scorched out of her as her eyes lit up with holy fire before burning up. The Hyuga clan covered it up as a Caged Bird seal mishap, and burnt the weight of Himawari in sandalwood incense as apology and plea at once.

With the Byakugan activated, Crow feels as though Himawari must have felt in the seconds she truly beheld divinity- tenketsu human but beyond that laid out through will, or constellations or poetry. This god took human form, veiled enough for Crow with his blunt combat-focused Byagukan to perceive them, yet Crow understands the inability of Seers to articulate godhood except through allusion and metaphor hinting at divine glory. While the four Root agents still pursuing them seemed to not notice the shroud of divinity the god drew about them, they did seem to notice the glow. Luckily, this distracted them briefly from Wolf, who had staggered and bent over to cough blood, meaning that the chest wound Wolf had gotten from the Root plant was much worse than Crow’s initial estimation. It also meant, Crow thought, tensing to fight his last as he burnt up like his dear cousin before him, that Wolf had not seen the god. Not until-

* * *

Wolf sees the weak light glinting off his armour as his blood sinks into the parched sand. Assuming it to be some form of jutsu, Wolf tenses and yanks on his uncooperative muscles, dredging up enough chakra to open and reactivate Obito’s sharingan so that he does not die to Konoha curled in pain, like his father did but dies at least trying to counterattack, memorise a jutsu, something other than accepting Konoha wished for him to die not as a wartime decision but the arrogance of peace, wanting to dispose of a weapon that might not fit perfectly in the Yondaime Hokage’s hand after- Minato-sensei, thinks Kakashi, Obito’s eyes weeping blood as it is forced open, I’m so sor-

_the eye that opens in battle sees all_

_the eye that opens in experience copies all_

_the eye that opens in knowledge reflects all_

_the eye that opens in grief-_

_the faces of-_

S̸̨̨͚̱͈̱̞̱̲͎̞̗̣͙͎̓̂̋̓̑̕ ̷̺̤̮̓H̶̨̙͉̮̟͎̘̯̤͔̺̲̤̾͑͐͌͒̈ ̷̨̼͕̗̘͍̘̈͂͊͊͌̕ͅỈ̸̢͊͊͊͌̀͛̍̂͒͠͝ ̸̢͓̼͉̼̮̮̝̩͔͓͈͕͎͔͋́̎K̴̞͕̰̥͆͊̋̍̔ ̴̢̖̲͚͔̹͈̖͚̻̻̖̮̟̓̃̅͂̔̑̎͜͠A̵̯̘̝̾̇͊̃̒̄͊͂̈̉̌̾͂͝ ̶̡̰̥̲̙͙̼̤͕̪͇͍́̿̑̉̐͑̃̊̊̉͗̿̊͐̊B̷̢̢̨̜͍̞̦̭̭̭̰̯̭̳̘̎̆́̇̓͆̿̊̕ ̵̡̛̛̼̀̓̍̚Ã̶͔̲ͅ ̴̢̡̠̜̖̭̞̠̪͇̘͌̉̎̋̿̓̉͋̏͐N̶͓̱̘̫̯̓͌̈́̍̿̌̚͘̕͠ ̷̤̟͔̒̉̄E̶̥̞̣̱͚͔͈̣̩̟̟̮͂̓͂̈́͌̏̔͒̾̈́͌̅͑͂͜

̵͇̞̪̝͙̠͔̪̳̤͐̑̈́̌̏̏̈́̆͜͝ͅͅ

  
  


The Root agent nearest him is speared through their throat with a kunai, choking as they fall to the ground. “Well?” says Possibly Shikabane, her lip quirking, “Are you going to stand around there all day or are you going to fight?” 

And Kakashi feels like he did after Kushina complimented his cooking or Minato-sensei complimented his taijutsu when it was just them or when he was very small and his father laughed and swung him around as their packs made a ruckus over Kakashi’s perfect throw. It bubbles up in his throat and as he breathes in he feels his ribs move smoothly and a lack of pain not from compartmentalization but from a lack of pain in a way Kakashi hadn’t felt for years, riddled with growing pains when he wasn’t riddled with injuries but his knees don’t ache and his lungs inflate smoothly and despite Kushina and Minato-sensei’s disappearances and the new Hokage chasing him down like a rat and sneering at Obito’s sacrifice and everything that should weigh him down until he wants to lie down in the mud near Obito and Rin’s graves and never get up, Kakashi Hatake for the first time since he walked into a room and saw his father lying in a pool of blood, feels like things might be turning out alright. After all, he has a god in his corner. What does Danzo have? Mortals?

Kakashi makes short work of one of the remaining Root agents and watches out of the corner of his eye as the ground seems to reach up and swallow the remaining squad that had been hanging back before without the use of jutsu. An earth god, then, maybe? Or was this sacred ground? Maybe Crow-taicho had known and laid down their lives as sacrifices? (This did seem like the sort of thing Crow-taicho would know- he seemed to know every part of the Elemental Countries inside out and it was extremely impressive.) Kakashi was fairly certain life as a god’s hired thug would be at the very least not any more terrible than his shinobi career so far. As a plus, he might see some smiting and maybe do some himself if he was dedicated enough! (A small part of him made sounds unbecoming of an ANBU but around right for a fiendishly excited 13-year-old daydreaming of using his cool lightning jutsu to smite evildoers with cool holy power from literally the coolest god who possibly powered up Obito’s sharingan and looked about Kakashi’s age and that was the coolest. That part of Kakashi’s brain used cool a lot, but the therapy textbook Kushina had made him read had said that expressing feelings and understanding them was healthy even if the only language Kakashi really had for the current divine experience he was having was ‘cool’. It was either that or hysterical laughter.)

Crow-taicho seemed to be taking option two, with occasional breaths in and out that sounded uncannily like muffled cursing, or possibly, prayer, along with talking to someone called Himawari. To distract Shikabane the Probable God away from his taicho’s probable breakdown, Kakashi tilted his mask towards her in an inquiring manner and asked “It is Shikabane, correct? Shikabane-ouja? Shikabane-hime?”

A strangled smile rose up on the god’s face as she began to glow slightly more warmly. “Sempai will do, if you must, Wolf.”

“Shikabane-sempai, then,” Kakashi replied, fighting an urge to applaud as the ground began to move them elsewhere, “You’re very sparkly, sempai.” Why. _Why._ This is why Kakashi communicated only through vocalizations and, previously, rule quotes. He doesn’t know how to use his ‘nice talking words’ as his father would say as he set him loose for his peer socialisation time every second day, and almost always caused a ‘peer’ to cry. Even now, Kakashi can’t look at Asuma Sarutobi without fighting the urge to wince and apologise for setting him under a genjutsu to make him eat handfuls of sand while playing ‘the world is made of mochi’. Even pre-sharingan Kakashi had realised he’d messed up on that one.

“I am, indeed, sparkly right now. I may be sparkly for some time, Wolf.” Shikabane-sempai mock-seriously answered him, ground speeding up as they approached some form of ruined temple brought to the surface through some form of great tremor. As they were set down gently on the outskirts, Shikabane glanced at the temple, muttered about forgetting to clean up, and Kakashi got to contently watch Shikabane-sempai (Minato-sensei had said role models were important!) fold a hulking mess of a temple over into itself and then into nothing like origami. It was very entertaining, although the noises Crow-taicho made watching it happen were out of the ordinary for the normally stoic Crow-taicho. While Kakashi was making allowances for extraordinary circumstances and thus working on his flexible mindset, there was flexibility and then there was the high-pitched unconscious whine Crow-taicho was letting off, similar to a cheap civilian radio being left on and untuned to any specific frequency. 

Shikabane was already contemplating and creating a rather nice pavilion for them to rest in, along with associated unknown greenery, while glowing a little brighter to make everything look nicely dramatic. Kakashi approved of the more dramatic lighting.

“Well,” said Shikabane-sempai, settling onto the steps leading up to the pavilion, “My time here is limited. No matter what happens, from what I can tell Wolf is going to be chased until he is brought back in several little boxes. I have the firepower that if you lure the ringleaders here, I can take care of them before I move on, with you if you want. I can move on whenever needed, but I can’t stay forever. Wolf, I can’t say for certain if the people you care about-”

“They’re dead.” Kakashi interrupts, knowing they ‘disappeared’ like he was about to. “Or they are so far away they won’t hear anything until it’s too late. And Kakashi Hatake’s reputation is bad enough if I am in the company of people who kill the Hokage then I will take the blame for it, even if I stand between Mikoto and Fugaku Uchiha while doing so. I’ll come with you.”

And as Crow-taicho calms down and Shikabane-sempai lights up like a falling star, Kakashi Hatake looks up at the endless desert sky and the full moon and thinks that no matter what people say about prodigies dying quickly and burning fast, his story has only just begun.

  
  
  
_the beginning_  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> warnings: obito and rin dead, minato and kushina dead but kakashi's in denial- religion? everyone is ooc from being hopped up on god juice, incredibly sleep deprived, or having a religious crisis.
> 
> vague au where danzo became hokage by 'disappearing' all the other candidates and shikako has a bit more control over her gelel merge
> 
> (also shikako can take people with her in this au of a gardens au because i say so)
> 
> aka Crow, Bat and Wolf Versus The Multiverse


End file.
